Path 2

Path 2

The Knobbies ’00

January 2, 2001

In their fourth year, the Awards Formerly Known as the Hidekis™ have been rechristened and redefined, their original erstwhile Yankee namesake now meting out mediocrity in the pits of Montreal. The new Yankee honoree, having distinguished himself over the years as adept at princely cock-ups even under the best of circumstances, alters the nature of the laurels, from notable non-achievements to no-excuse bungles and barrel-jam misfires. 2000 was, as you might imagine, a rich field to pick through. The big Es go to the following decision-making teams.

Love’s Labour’s Lost, for outstanding achievement in getting Alicia Silverstone to speak in iambs; and a special citation to director/star/self-sucker Kenneth Branagh, for making 10 Things I Hate About You seem positively Elizabethan.

What Lies Beneath, for never realizing that Michelle Pfeiffer’s bitter-junkie cadaverousness is far scarier than the paint-by-numbers ghost story.

The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, for failing to create a simple, harmless entertainment and instead producing a polluting, brain-ironing horror that should’ve immediately been shipped to Antarctica in lead-lined trucks and buried in the ice.

The Cell, for allowing Tarsem to omit Keith Haring, Cindy Sherman, and Alexander Sokurov from his nearly definitive How to Shoplift From Star Artists handbook.

Cecil B. Demented, for laboriously name-dropping Peckinpah, Sirk, Almodóvar, Fuller, Fassbinder, and Preminger and thus drawing in sharp relief how little John Waters has learned from any of them about basic filmmaking.

8 1/2 Women, for demonstrating that, at present, every single idea, notion, inspiration, quirk, and firing synapse in Peter Greenaway’s skull is a deep and painful mistake.

And to the distributors of Better Living, Wildflowers, The Price of Air, The Prince of Central Park, Clouds, Followers, Into My Heart, and Blue Moon, for robbing these movies of their proper destiny of remaining lost in indie-film oblivion.

Winners, pick up your Knobbies—a baseball you can drop and drop again—at a sporting-goods store near you.